here’s a song I wrote way back, it’s sung from the point of view of a tragic hero of some story. In that story he sets out from his childhood home, a small fishing village on the Penumbric coast, journeys across vast forests, mountain ranges, plains and wastes, having all sorts of adventures, some triumphant, and some painful lessons that leave their scars. He discovers a fairy world of wonder and marries a member of the fae species. They live a happy life together, or happy as life gets, it has it’s ups and downs. Then one day he wakes up to find all of it gone.

Picture a 1980s era fantasy novel cover with a figure wearing a crimson tunic, tan breeches and buckskin boots standing in a small clearing on an otherwise forested knoll, holding the reins of a horse and looking out over an expanse. There’s gold embossed writing on the cover, “Sandors Trail.” That’s the world this is being sung from. It’s sung in a gentle, winsome, Greensleevesesque tune. Oh, and for some reason, although it is pre-mechanized tech world, they have saccharine. Magic? Without further ado…

Traveler’s Song

My family, friends and lovers have all been fae
And from their tales I’ve built my home
My family, friends and lovers are all fairies
And I’ve always known
A time would come one day
when they’d return beneath the earth from whence they came

So now my home is gone
The mirrored walls have fallen in
Into the people I might have been
Without your stories I’m left with nothing to believe
No, I never had something up my sleeve
No hooks to hang a map
No blueprints laid to build it back

I stand here empty handed
Full of doubts about the creature I’ve become
Staring at the lifelines I’ve undone
Grasping at the shadows of empty cups
Long outgrown the saccharine taste of the stuff
That kept me running in circles so long
Tethered here for all my days dreaming
Until last night I woke up screaming
Alone and naked to with no home
Old and battered to the bone

One last circle round this open grave before I go
And I confess to the gap
Between what you gave and what I stole
To get here I sold it all along the way
Now there’s no here left to stay
Nowhere left to go but forward
So forward I must face
Today I leave the ghost of this place
Without a road to follow
Without the benefit of signs to guide my way
Stepping off
Stepping off to what I cannot say